It's unclear what the currency will be called, but anonymous sources familiar with the situation told the outlet the social media platform is "very serious" about blockchain technology and their in-development virtual coin.

It's not exactly news that Facebook has been investigating the potential uses for blockchain tech in their business. As Cheddar notes, the company's Morgan Beller was looking into the technology as far back as a year ago.

More recently, Recode reported Messenger VP David Marcus would be placed in charge of a team whose sole job would be to "explore how to best leverage blockchain across Facebook, starting from scratch."

At any rate, Facebook gave the following statement to Cheddar regarding their plans:

Like many other companies Facebook is exploring ways to leverage the power of blockchain technology. This new small team will be exploring many different applications. We don’t have anything further to share.

Facebook's apparent decision to pursue the development of an actual cryptocurrency certainly raises more questions than it answers. What would Facebook use the currency for? Will the company give users an official method of mining for it?

For the time being, those questions will remain unanswered, but Facebook will likely reveal more information about their crypto plans in the future.